Advent IV St. Andrew’s Pictou, December 19, 2004

 

Matthew 1:18-25

 

The Unseen Hand of God

 

Modern science has deemed that Matthew 1:18-25 couldn’t have taken place in the way that the Bible has said that it did.

 

The text says “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child…”

 

According to modern science, to this point there is no problem. It sometimes happens that a man and a woman have been engaged, and then they find out that she is pregnant.

 

But after the text tells us that, “…she is found to be with child,” the text goes on to say the words, “from the Holy Spirit.”

 

Modern science does not recognize the Holy Spirit, nor that could the Holy Spirit have gotten Mary pregnant without Joseph’s assistance or another physically human man’s assistance.

 

Maybe you have the same opinion. You think that Mary had to have a sexual union with one man or another to become pregnant with Jesus.

 

The text tells us that it wasn’t Joseph who assisted in this pregnancy. “Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” Nothing out of the ordinary here: a good man willing to put himself out to prevent a woman he had cared about to be the subject of a scandal. But it is also obvious that Joseph held the belief that he had not caused this pregnancy to happen.

 

So if a man got Mary pregnant, the text clearly says that it wasn’t Joseph.

 

But we move on to still other scientific problems: “But just when he had resolved to do this, (to divorce Mary later) an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’” (The name “Jesus” means, “he will save his people.”)

 

Modern science does not accept our night time dreams as empirical evidence for physical phenomena. Now if Joseph had a therapist, the therapist and Joseph could have done what they some “dream work” and found out that maybe Joseph had a Messiah complex that related to his ancestral heritage, and so on. Or if Mary and Joseph had attended their neighbourhood family planning clinic, they might have had some counseling to sort this situation out in some kind of way, or as some might wish: to have prevented the pregnancy.

 

But in looking at this text, we are confronted with some very basic scientific analytical problems that get in the way of making a scientific case about the pregnancy of Jesus:

# 1 -modern science did not exist 2,000 years ago. There was nobody qualified to look at the situation and make a thorough scientific investigation, video tape the participants, check the DNA, and make a forensic case so that we could have a proper analysis and make our conclusions. Since this was not able to be done, we can’t make scientific conclusions from the Biblical documentation because it was not written for this purpose and does not lend itself to this kind of present day examination.

# 2 -there was no therapist to talk to Joseph and make his/her notes that we can examine about what was going on with the relationship.

# 3 -there was no family planning clinic to bring this story together as we might do today.

 

So what are we left with? We are left with two irreconcilable issues:

-we cannot superimpose modern science on a set of documentary evidence that has not been produced with scientific or forensic analysis in mind, and

- Mary is pregnant with Jesus and we don’t have a satisfactory explanation of how she got pregnant.

 

So what are we to do?

 

The first thing I think that we must admit is that modern science has indeed informed and helped us to know what we previously didn’t know. Recent history has informed us that washing our hands prevents disease, because we now know that bacteria and virus can make us sick.

 

We know historically that the birth of the baby Jesus has greatly impacted and transformed human and world history.

 

We know that many intelligent women and men believe in Jesus Christ, and have experienced the power of the Holy Spirit to bring life and healing to them and to others.

 

We can also intelligently surmise that 1,000 years from now, both science and religion will be transformed from what they are today, because people will know many more things 1,000 years from now than we do today. Science will be more informed. Religion will be more informed.

 

We will know Jesus better. Maybe he will come back and straighten out the issue himself.

 

But there is one thing for certain that we do have today, and that is we each have what we individually believe to be; we each have our own faith. We can choose to believe in the Jesus who came to save his people, or not. We can choose to believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to be alive in our world, or not.

 

We can choose to believe that the unseen hand of God was at work in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, 2,000 years ago and still is at work today, or we can choose not to believe.

 

We can choose to believe that

“All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken

by the Lord through the prophet:

‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

And they shall name him Emmanuel.’

Which means ‘God is with us.’”

 

By the way, remember that the word, “Virgin” back then meant, “a young girl of about 12 or 13.” It did not mean what it means today. You can have “a 30 year old virgin” today, but that reality could not exist back then, because virginity referred to age, not sexual experience.

 

“’And they shall name him Emanuel’

Which means, ‘God is with us.’”

 

We can choose to believe that “God is with us.”

 

Two thousand years ago, Joseph was there and without benefit of modern science, believed what the angel told him because he named the boy “Jesus.” In the Jewish tradition, it was usual practice for the mother was to name the baby. To have Joseph name Jesus, is our indication that he chose to believe that the unseen hand of God was active in his life and in world history: the royal line of David was ongoing and religiously pertinent to the story.

 

The exact some thing is true for each of us: we can choose to believe that the unseen hand of God is active and alive in our personal lives and in our world. It all comes down to belief .

 

Scientists might ask you to believe in their theories.

A doctor might ask you to believe that the surgery or medication will make you well.

Your spouse might ask you to believe that they love you.

Some have scientific, measurable proof to back their belief.

 

I am asking you to believe that “God is with us.”

 

I can measure that belief with personal happiness, peace of mind, understanding, the power to forgive, joy and love which are all impossible to measure scientifically, but personally measurable all the same.

 

If it is so very important to you, and you really need to “scientifically” know how Mary got pregnant, you can ask God when you meet him.

 

In the next part of this service you are going to witness the story of the birth of Jesus being told: “The Pageant;” another example of the infinite ways the story of Jesus can be conveyed.

 

My guess is that you will experience, yet again, that “God is with us;” and how the hidden hand of God is immeasurably alive and well in the hearts of the children and for that presence of Emmanuel, “God with us,” there is hope in the future for our broken world.

 

AMEN                Rev. Alan Stewart